2 days off the horse...

I had a dentist appt and a VA doc appt this week on Tues and Wed, effectively taking away my lunch hour that I use to go to work out. I kind of made a decision that if I was going to work  out several days a week, I didn't want it to cut into my time at home, so I go at lunch.

Incidentally, I got a confirmation from the VA guy yesterday that an issue i've been dealing with for years is definitely connected to my lower back injury and not in my head. It was hard to hear it, but i'm glad that I can point to a reason and we can move forward with dealing with it, and that my suspicions were correct. It wasn't a failing on their part, i've been mentioning it to them since 2002, I just never considered it at the top of my list to deal with.

Back to the gym today.

I felt agitated this morning, knowing that I would not be working out today. How cool is that? I have a dentist appt. this AM that I will carry my lunch hour for (since you can't take sick time except in 4 hour increments, but you can take vacation time in 2?) so I won't  be able to sneak off during the day. My nights are kind of limited since I get off between 5 and 6, so if I went and worked out it would be another hour not home.

Incidentally, Savage Garden came on the radio tonight and I actually didn't want to kill them. Stress relief from exercise, perhaps?

Here is my progression for the last 30 days. You can see when I started actively going to exercise, since just monitoring calories for the first month didn't do a whole lot. I try to keep myself at around 1950 a day, which, according to various BMR calc is about 1500 less than I should need to maintain myself in the low 300s. Doing just that I was gradually dropping a pound or so every week and a half. I also switched scales in there (The little red star around the 6-7th, and found that the one I had been using was 'off' compared to a three beam scale at the gym)

Heart Rate monitor-

I love this thing. I have a Sunnto T4d with a heart strap, that I got used from a watch forum in trade for something I wasn't wearing. This thing ROCKS! It talks to the machine im on so I don't have to fiddle with the cal/counter or the heart rate handles, and since it is strapped to me I feel its probably more accurate than the machine.

I worked out with it on Saturday and I blew off 764 calories in 36 minutes. I skipped Sunday, and then today I did 766 cal/34 minutes. WoOt!

Its nice to not have to worry about holding onto the handles, and I like that it monitors my heart rate and stores it. It also has a 'coaching' function that bases your next workouts from your previous ones. It hasn't learned enough about me, yet, though. I keep working outside of its parameters for my 'activity' level that I programmed into it at the start (slightly above three toe'd sloth).

Here's what my day looked like today. I eat pretty much the same every day, so its simple to keep track of it. See, honey-im eating! (my wife thinks I don't, or something)

ch ch ch changes 2...

 A month ago I went to the VA and got really disappointed. (some of you are thinking, "Its the VA, what's new?")

I had gone in to have an adjustment to my medicine, and to talk about some other things. What ticked me off was that their scale weighed me in at 317.6 lbs. I went home that night and checked my scale against their and it was only ".something" different. This was up 12 lbs from August when I started going in regularly again, with the only substantive change being different medication. Three weeks ago I started going to Anytime fitness more regularly, and keeping track of everything I put in my mouth, daily, just to get a baseline.

This week marks a month since then. Scale weight this morning 309.5.

I do believe that me and the Precor have started the beginning of a beautiful relationship.